Building up the community and supporting minority-owned businesses is part of Hotel Revival’s DNA, according to General Manager Donte Johnson.
Interviewed as part of an HNN series focused on hotel general managers, Johnson said Baltimore-based Hotel Revival started planning social events at the hotel in 2020, but when the pandemic hit and indoor dining closed, it was “a shock to the system."
Baltimore then had “a lot of our brothers and sisters in the industry who are immediately without employment, and some of them really strained financially,” he said.
The team at Hotel Revival started thinking of ways to help those in the community. Since restaurants had to close and the hotel had food available, “we started cooking off all the food we had on hand and did a community day where we said … ‘We’re not checking pay stubs or IDs or anything like that; anybody who has a need, stop by because the food’s there.’”
From there, Hotel Revival reached out to Coastal Sunbelt Produce to send its unused food to those in Baltimore who needed it, creating an ongoing partnership throughout the summer, Johnson said.
“Every Saturday the team got together — managers, supervisors coming in on the day off. We created [care packages] and distributed them every week through the summer and fall last year,” he said.
Other businesses started getting involved and contributed to the local care packages. A local coffee roaster added in bags of coffee, and a local florist supplied flowers.
Johnson said they made it a point to include “anything that will put a smile on people’s faces” in the care packages.
The hotel also opened its second-floor kitchen to a local restaurateur to allow them to operate from there and “keep their business alive,” he said.
Can you talk more about Hotel Revival's COVID-19 relief efforts?
It really became the community [taking care of] the community. And we were a vessel. It helped connect [the community] in that way.
Easy things for us, right away we started doing complimentary rooms for front-line healthcare workers and really anyone who was a part of that initial wave of essential people who were having to put it on the line every day. I was hearing stories of local police officers sleeping in their cars between shifts and things like that, and that just wasn’t something that sat well with me.
Those are the things that were easy for us. It becomes an afterthought because for us, if everyone in our food chain organizationally is bought into the idea, then those are the things that become easy. … It’s just a matter of having a team that really cares.
Hotel Revival is focusing on including local businesses in its supply and vendor list. Is that something your hotel has always done?
That’s always been part of our game plan. I think we’ve re-imagined what’s possible through the pandemic. We’ve always been focused on community impact; we’ve always been focused on how we can leave things a little better than we found it.
Not just the pandemic, but also all of the momentum around social justice, equity, inclusion [and] diversity in this moment has led us to re-imagine what’s possible. Those two forces working at the same time has really inspired us to think differently.
Your hotel tries to be "more than a place to rest your head." What does that mean to you, and how do you convey that in your hotel and throughout the community?
The rooms are incredibly designed; the [restaurant view] is amazing, but to me, what really sets us apart is everything else that happens here. It’s not difficult to convey to anybody that steps in the hotel because right away you feel this is not your typical hotel. I responded to a TripAdvisor review [recently] where the guest said "This just doesn’t feel like a typical hotel I’ve stayed at."
That’s a very natural conversation to have. It’s hard, because in a lot of cases, the way people express their experience at a hotel is through social media. Our TripAdvisor is a really aesthetically focused undertaking. It’s not a scenario where we’re trying to weave in the stories of people in the community who we have connected with or supported. I think people are pleasantly surprised when they get here and they hear some of the things we’ve done because it’s just not the way a hotel typically participates in the community.
It wasn’t hard for us to find a local toilet paper business [as a vendor], for example. When I first learned how to order toilet paper at a hotel, I was told you go to the online personal platform, whatever that is for whatever company. You get it there … you never think to challenge what’s beyond that because that’s just where you get toilet paper from. You just accept that as an absolute. And then at some point, someone goes, "There’s actually a Black woman-owned company based in Baltimore that creates toilet paper." And then you have a head-exploding moment where you go, "Wow. That sounds really interesting. I’d love to talk to her about it." Then you meet with her and you realize not only is she based in Baltimore and she’s also a musician, she’s donated thousands of rolls of toilet paper throughout the pandemic. That’s the kind of company I want to be in business with.
You do enough of those things, and the story of the hotel becomes way more than the rooms and the restaurant.
What tips do you have for hoteliers who want to become more involved in their communities?
I would ask people to lean into their imagination and set aside any preconceived notions or anything you’ve programmed yourself to believe about what has to be. It comes down to looking at everyone you do business with and every decision you make every day and asking yourself, "Is there a way to approach this that leaves things a little better than we found it?"
A lot of times people hear about some of the things we’re doing and [they assume] we’re twisting and turning the business and doing things [that cost more]. … It doesn’t cost us more money to buy toilet paper [from a local vendor] than it would cost us to buy Charmin. But [Charmin] isn’t putting the box of toilet paper on the back of their car and driving it to the hotel themselves. … They’re not standing next to us passing out dinner to people who have a need.
You start to realize if you build one idea off another idea ... if you're doing it from a place of sincerely wanting to make a difference, it's infectious and it becomes an entire ecosystem [in the community].